Ooookay, so apparently I have actually been getting reviews. *grumbles* Stupid FF changed my notification settings on me. Again. Anyways, thank you to all of you who have reviewed. I have not been forgotten! :')


4 – Struggles Begin

"We're going after them," Iggy declared adamantly, itching to leave. "Who knows what they've done to Ella already?"

"But how?" Gazzy pointed out, "we have no idea where Ella or Dr. M are." They'd tried several times to contact Dr. Martinez on her phone, all to no avail, and Ella's phone was still sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Well," Nudge said, "if Dr. Martinez isn't on a plane, won't she still be at the airport?"

Iggy nodded. "I don't think they'd have gotten on their flight yet, so she, Total, and Akila should be stranded there—unless Dr. M was taken too." He frowned, "The baddies always seem to have a bone to pick with the CSM, so they might have nabbed her just because of that."

"And Ella...?" Nudge inquired.

"We'll split up. You and Angel can go after Dr. M, and me and Gazzy can look for Ella."

"I don't think it's a good idea," Angel disagreed, "we might be able to find Total and Alika and Dr. Martinez, but we have no idea where Ella is. We need to focus on more important things, like finding Max and Fang. With something this big, they have to be caught up in it somehow." There was a resolute edge to her voice.

"Angel," Iggy said, sighing, "Max and Fang have been missing for months, and we've been searching for them most of that time—and we still haven't found them. Ella might be nearby, and the longer we wait the harder it'll be to find her."

"Who says we have to find her?"

Iggy gaped at Angel. "You can't be serious." How could she even consider leaving Ella behind like that? Not only was she Max's sister, she was... she was Ella. "Angel, we have to go after her—Ella is family."

"Iggy's right, Angel," Nudge agreed, "We have to try and help her."

He could practically hear Angel scowling. What was her problem, anyways? "You can't go," she declared adamantly, "It's not safe."

"Last I checked," Iggy replied, "I don't take orders from you. And since when has 'not safe' stopped us from doing anything? Look, I may be blind, but I'm still the oldest here and—"

"Shhh!" Angel suddenly interrupted, signalling for him to be quiet. "Someone's coming." Another pause, and then, "A bunch of those soldiers are in the area going house to house. Something about a blind, winged mutant causing a disturbance at the grocery store." She used an accusatory inflection.

Great, Iggy thought sarcastically. "Okay, we've got to get out of here fast. Gasman, you and me will grab the backpacks—Angel, you and Nudge grab the cell phones and whatever else we need." He doubted they'd get any reception on the cells, but it was better than nothing.

Barely a minute later the four of them were gathered behind the house, ready to take off. "Okay," Iggy said, "We each have our own emergency packs and packs for Dr. Martinez and Ella. You girls call if you find anything, and me and Gazzy will do vice versa. If you can't get a hold of us, try to stay near the airport so we can find you later on." Then they spread their wings parted ways, Iggy having no idea where he and Gazzy would go now.

"Are you okay?" Meagan asked me, and I grimaced.

"Not really," I told her, "but I don't think I'm going to throw up again, if that's what you're asking." Slowly I walked away from the toilet and sat down on my bunk, trying to process everything that was happening.

Meagan sat down next to me. "I know this is a bad time," she said, "but the scientist guys who were here left this for you." She handed me a clipboard and a pen, then explained, "It's a medical questionnaire they had everyone fill out."

I looked at the form on the clipboard for a moment. "This sheet asks for our names," I noticed, "Don't they already have our medical records and stuff?"

"No," Meagan shook her head, "They were randomly taking DNA samples from kids in public places in a bunch of different states. We had genes they thought were most likely to be compatible with the mutant genes, so they tagged us and then tracked us down when they were ready to do the experiments. They don't have any medical files or anything. See, that's where the tracker used to be." She gestured to a tiny cut on my left shoulder.

So they hadn't grabbed me because I was Max's sister or a CSM founder's daughter. That encouraged me, for some reason. These people weren't omnipotent, they didn't know everything about me; they just grabbed me because I had DNA that was compatible with human-avian genes.

So I filled in the form, signing my name as Ella Alverez. I thought about signing something clever, like 'Ride' or 'Griffiths' (that's Iggy's last name... I wish.), but it seemed too obvious somehow, so I just filled in the first name that popped into my head then walked over to the barrack door—or gate, more accurately, since it was a part of the fence—to give the guard my form.

"Don't touch the metal," the guard warned me, "it's highly electrified, and direct contact may result in serious injury." Then, with his heavily gloved hands, he unlocked the gate, took the clipboard and pen from me, then he left with my questionnaire.

I had the sinking feeling I had just submitted my own death warrant.

The next morning, I was really regretting signing my last name as starting with an 'A', because I was in the first group of girls to be taken to get their shots and doctor's examinations. Oh joy.

"Ella Alverez, Anna Bartoli, and Kendra Brancet, come to the front of the barrack now," the guard barked, waiting to escort us to our doom doctor's exams. Me and the two other girls called shuffled nervously through the gate when he opened it for us, being extremely careful not to touch the sides so we wouldn't get fried.

The hallways were dimly lit and narrow, and had a "DIY renovation meets abandoned warehouse" feel to it. It was as if someone had taken a old, empty shell of a building and then built a bunch of rooms and hallways into the open space—the roof was supported with heavy-duty beams and stood maybe five feet over my head, and most of the walls (the ones not made of concrete or sheet metal) looked new and thin, each sporting a fresh coat of white paint. Clearly they weren't part of the original building layout. It wasn't the most high-end, clean-cut facility I'd ever seen, but something tells me they didn't build this place with aesthetics in mind.

We took a couple turns to get to a main corridor, which was much wider than the other halls and had four smaller hallways branching out from it on each side. There seemed to be about six rooms per hallway—a total of forty-eight rooms accessible from the corridor. I wondered what they were used for.

I found out the use of one room rather quickly: the room that I was ushered into, where a doctor stood waiting for me, looked to be a medical examination room. "Ella Alverez?" I nodded. "You may go now," he said to the guard, who nodded and then left to deliver the other two girls to their appointments.

After being stripped down and given a full physical examination, as well as providing several DNA samples (experiences I did not enjoy at all), I was given a clean tank top and a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants to change into. Once I was fully clothed again, my examining doctor, Dr. Brailes his nametag read, swabbed my arm with an alcohol wipe and inserted a needle into the disinfected skin. I winced at the sting of the needle, and shuddered when Dr. Brailes withdrew it. "You're done for today," he declared plainly, escorting me back to the main corridor. There was a guard standing at the head of it, waiting to escort someone back to their barrack. I was passed off to him, and he led me back to my confines. That's it? I thought to myself. Somehow I had been expecting something scarier, more dramatic, but really, today had just been like an uncomfortable, unfriendly doctor's check-up.

At least, that's what I thought, until I started feeling sick.

The muscle pain and nausea had set in less than an hour after my shot, and as girls were swapped in and out of the barracks, everyone slowly succumbed to the same symptoms. All of us lay on our bunks uncomfortably, tossing and turning for several hours trying to get comfortable.

My symptoms eased up after a while, but most of the other girls were still curled up in pain beneath their blankets. I noticed that Meagan, the girl I had been talking to earlier, looked especially ill—and she had fallen sick more quickly than the other girls who had received shots the same time she had.

"Hey," a voice above me said, several hours after we'd all gotten our shots, "you on the bunk under mine, you feel well enough to chat?"

"Sure," I replied, climbing off my bunk and up onto the top bunk. The girl was sitting cross-legged on it, her dark hair draped over her slender shoulders. I recognized her as one of the girls who I'd been escorted with to the examination rooms.

"I'm Anna," she introduced, motioning for me to sit next to her.

"Ella," I told her, "Nice to meet you."

Anna nodded. "Even if it is here," she added with a dim smile.

Despite our grim circumstances, Anna and I hit it off pretty quick; we talked about school, friends, sports, movies, pretty much anything to pass the time. And, eventually, we talked about what was going on in the outside world.

"Things got really messed up really fast," Anna said, shaking her head, "Did you see some of the stuff that was playing on the TV before you got taken?"

"Yeah," I answered, "It's so creepy. Talk about a hostile takeover."

"It almost makes me glad we're holed up here instead of out there experiencing the apocalypse." Anna smiled at me. "Almost."

Then Anna changed topics. "So, who did you leave on the outside?" she asked quietly, "I have my dad and two brothers. One brother was taken too. I guess they have the boys holed up somewhere else."

My heart ached at the thought of my own (partially mutant) family. "I don't really know," I admitted to Anna, "My mom might have been on a plane when all those flights disappeared, and I think my aunt was on vacation in Europe or something. And my sister and brother-in-law... nobody's heard from them in a while."

A sympathetic expression crossed Anna's face. "So you don't have anyone?"

I shrugged. "I might, I guess. I mean, my sister's friends are sort of like family, but they have to move around a lot sometimes. And, knowing them, they're probably more focussed on avoiding capture than worrying about me." I desperately hoped the Flock hadn't been captured too. If they had, then I was sunk.

"Captured?" Anna echoed. My eyes widened slightly, and I mentally slapped myself for letting a detail like that slip. However, Anna didn't seem to think too strangely of it, and asked, "Were they disabled?"

I breathed a sigh of relief; I forgot that they were arresting people with disabilities. "Um, yeah," I replied, "one of them is blind."

"Clone soldiers capturing invalids, kids getting kidnapped out of their houses..." Anna shook her head, "It doesn't seem real, you know? It sounds like something out of a weird sci-fi movie."

I smiled sadly. "My life hasn't seemed real in a long time." I tried to give an amused snort, but it came out as more of a choked back sob. I could feel a tear threatening to leak from the corner of my eye, and I wiped it away quickly. You will not cry, you will not cry, you will not cry—and then I started crying. Great.

To my slight relief, however, Anna started crying too. "Those jerks," she mumbled with the slightest curl of her mouth, "taking us away from our families and using us like lab rats." At least I wasn't the only one torn up about it.

"W-we shouldn't cry," I stuttered, sniffling loudly, "it annoys the guards."

"Well they should've thought of that before they took a bunch of teenage girls hostage," Anna sniffed, laughing behind her tears. "I swear, we're like a bunch of leaky water faucets!" But even though it felt good to let some of the pain out, I couldn't help feel like I was letting Max and the others down somehow, sitting there blubbering like an idiot.